Warpath

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Are you really okay to do this?” Remmy asked Finn quietly.

  He slept like the dead the night before, but woke up thinking that he’d be seeing half the people on his engineering team. In the short time he slumbered on that Regent Galactic manufactured bunk, on a mattress that had been softened by who knew how many enemy soldiers, he’d managed to forget that his team were almost all dead. The last thing he wanted to do was see that bunk again. “I’d rather do something than sit around and look at pictures of an engineering team that took months to get together on the Warlord. I wasn’t friends with most of them, a lot of them thought I was too young to be their boss, but I still can’t believe they’re gone. I can’t believe the Warlord’s gone.” Finn’s command and control unit sent a tiny buzz through his vacsuit and he glanced at it without thinking. “Why did I look? I knew it could only be bad news,” he said, holding his arm unit up so Remmy could see that he just got a notification from Crewcast that the Warlord crew were officially unassigned from that ship. “It’s going to be like this for weeks, I’ll be reminded that I was just lucky the bridge wasn’t hit instead.”

  Remmy put a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye as though visors didn’t separate them. “Hey, I know exactly what you’re going through. The guy I followed into space, I guess you’d call him my first Captain Valent, is leading half the Order of Eden military. The woman he loved and, well, I never told her, but she was a sister to me, got smeared right in front of us. Shitloads of other people I cared about got killed, and I don’t forget them. I don’t keep them in my public Crewcast file, it’s an encrypted thing I don’t look at every day, but I remember them, I crack that file more often than I like people to see.”

  “Yeah, one-up me,” Finn said. “My loss isn’t as big as your loss.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” Remmy said. “I’m telling you that there isn’t a person anywhere that hasn’t lost someone, whether it’s to some seriously screwed up adventures like me, or because of the Holocaust, so many people are finding a way to keep going. I think that’s half of what keeps us on our feet, that there are other people who refuse to fall down. What’s on the other half of that equation? Well, I’m just too annoying to die. You’ll have to find your own reason to make that balance. Maybe it’s because so many people do respect you. Hell, you have the Admiral and the most feared Captain in at least two sectors fighting over you and Agameg.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Finn said, catching a glimpse of the Clever Dream drifting into the launch bay. A crew list came up with Agameg in second command behind Lieutenant Garrison.

  Remmy turned in time to see the ship gracefully set down on the deck. “My comm is telling me that’s our mission transport,” he said. “I didn’t think we were expecting trouble.”

  “Neither did I,” Finn said. “Maybe a stubborn door, but nothing more serious than that.”

  “Well, it is a vault,” Remmy said, attaching his rifle to a short line on his chest and starting towards the Clever Dream’s port side ramp. “Are you going to be okay for this, whatever it is?”

  “Yeah, like I said, I’d rather be busy,” Finn replied.

  Agameg greeted them with a smile that was a little wide to be human, something Finn was used to. The bounds of the human shape weren’t always keenly adhered to by his best friend, but he was getting better at imitating the general shape. The cilia that Agameg once let dangle loose from his cheekbones were replaced with solid cheeks. The colour of his skin overall was still a little off, on the pink side so he looked like he was about to blush, and his eyes were still true issyrian size, green ovals that took up nearly half of his face, but they always seemed friendly. His nose was a little more than a bump on his face, with slightly larger, rounder holes than before, and his mouth was much more detailed, starting to look like slim human lips. Too much time had passed since he last served with Agameg, the better part of two months, and he could see his friend was very happy to see him. “I have found a pheromone match for you,” he whispered. “I have only once noticed such a perfect fit, and that was after Captain Valent was rebuilt last time. She is sitting in the cargo hold with the rest of the people who want to transfer here.”

  “Wow, awkward!” Remmy said far too loudly for Finn’s taste. “Hey, don’t tell him who it is, I want to see if your nose science is on the money.”

  “On the money?” Agameg asked.

  “Accurate,” Finn said, “he means accurate. I think he’s kidding, but it can be hard to tell.”

  “This is no laughing matter, and it goes well past my nose. In fact, if I were out of my vacsuit my entire body would be sensing whatever passes through the air, you cannot imagine how much I can learn from simply standing in an atmosphere,” Agameg protested.

  “I know, I’m sorry, Lieutenant Commander,” Remmy said.

  “I think he has the right idea though,” Finn said. “Don’t point her out, because then I’ll have all kinds of expectations, and pressure.”

  “Humans let this stuff happen naturally,” Remmy said. “Sometimes it seems random, but we find our way through.”

  “You don’t realize how hard it was to find a match for Finn at all,” Agameg said. “I’ve been secretly keeping my senses keen to finding one since he and Ashley failed to connect.”

  “You and Ashley? Pretty pilot, favourite instructor Ashley?” Remmy asked Finn.

  “For a minute,” Finn replied. “We’re just friends now.”

  “Breeding is important for humanity now,” Agameg pressed.

  “Whoa there!” Remmy said, laughing. “We don’t breed well under pressure, or when we know we’re being smelled.”

  “This is funny?” Agameg said as he started leading them down the main corridor to the hold at the rear of the ship.

  “Not really,” Finn said.

  “Oh, it’s all funny,” Remmy countered.

  “But, seriously,” Finn said to Agameg. “Thank you for looking for me, it’s good to know there’s someone out there, at least chemically. Wait. She doesn’t know, does she?”

  “No, that would be a strange thing to do. Everyone is in here,” Agameg reminded quietly, a glimmer of excitement in his eyes.

  “Okay,” Finn said, more nervous than he could remember ever being. “But really don’t tell me who it is. I just want to be myself, that way if anything happens, it’ll come naturally.”

  “I’m going to step in if it looks like things are about to fail,” Agameg said.

  “Oh my God,” Remmy said, “everyone should have a wingman like you!”

  “I’m a terrible pilot,” Agameg said. “I don’t know what this one’s talking about half the time,” he said to Finn.

  “I’ll explain later,” Finn replied. “Just, no matchmaking today, okay?”

  “If you say so. It is good to be on a mission with you,” Agameg said. “That’s enough for today.”

  The double doors slid open to reveal a modestly sized hangar with a temporary rack of seats and a heavy set of airlock doors at the rear. They were all temporary modifications.

  The forty-nine seats were crammed into the space, and there were only a few left closest to the temporary airlock. Finn tried not to pay attention to how many women were in the crowd – it was about half, so at least twenty-two by his estimation – or if he’d met them before – most of them were wearing new Triton vacsuits of every colour from every department, and he could only recognize three – and he failed at ignoring them completely.

  Lieutenant Commander Stephanie Vega came through the airlock, barely giving it enough time to finish opening, and looked around. “Okay, this is more than we need.” She pointed to a random Ensign from the Triton crew wearing a blue Engineering Department vacsuit. “You, why are you here?”

  “I’m here for the mission,” she replied, not looking up from her slender command and control unit.

  “What mission?” Stephanie asked, all business.

  “I heard that if we went on this mi
ssion we would be able to transfer to the new crew,” she replied.

  “You know, like the end of a ladder match in sims?” added another crewmember in a white vacsuit, marking him as a general maintenance crewman. “Finish a mission, get an opportunity for a better one?”

  Stephanie’s mouth twitched into a lopsided smile, it wasn’t a happy one. “So, there was a rumour out there that said that if you signed up for this mission, you got to do what, exactly?”

  “Join the new crew under Captain Valent,” said a woman in a black and gold vacsuit with the rank insignia of Lieutenant Commander on her wrists. She toyed with a hair-tie, sitting back in her seat without showing a hint of nervousness. “I’m here because this ship needs me more than the Triton, there are plenty of people in communications there, a few waiting for my job. I’m the only analyst who signed up, but I think most of the other people here came because someone put a list of available engineering positions up. Oh, and there are four more commuter shuttles coming. All from Haven Shore.”

  Stephanie glanced at her command and control unit then looked over the crew. “Okay, looks like there was a mix up. The list of the engineering positions and this mission got combined in the system and everyone except for the people on my list are getting off this ship and going to work on the Blessed Mission starting today. That means training, hauling skid loads of parts that were burned out in the fighting to shuttles headed to a recycling barge, and it means a solid twelve hour day,” Stephanie said so her voice could be heard clearly across the compartment. She raised it even more when a few crewmembers started groaning. “Hey, it’s all good news. You get to sign up for the Captain’s new crew, and you’ll have a small part in repairing his ship for him. I have three people on my list, their names are Lieutenant Commander Billy Finn, Sargent Remmy Sands from the Rangers, and Lieutenant Commander Liara Erron. Everyone else, get off my mission craft!” She stepped aside and directed everyone towards the airlock with a sweep of her arm.

  “I’m not on the list?” Agameg asked, alarmed. He squeezed between the seats and the crewmembers to speak to Lieutenant Commander Stephanie Vega, who greeted him with a smile. “I’m not on the mission list?” he asked her, touching her command and control unit.

  “You’re not on any list, Commander,” Stephanie said. “You’ve been bumped up in rank past me, couldn’t have happened to a better crewman. Only thing is, you’re not assigned to a ship or any missions right now.”

  Agameg looked at his command and control unit, then at Finn, who was moving towards the pair at a slower pace through the departing crewmembers. “I’m a Commander in Triton Fleet but not on Triton? Not on this ship? Not on any ship?” Agameg asked no one in particular. “Why? Why has this happened? I transferred to Captain Valent staff last night.”

  “It’s okay, Aggie,” Stephanie said, comforting him with a hand on his arm.

  “Why?” Agameg whispered to himself, then he flinched at something he saw on his command unit screen. “Ayan is Engineering Chief? Rank of Captain now? She was Commodore, how can she be a Captain now? And Engineering Chief?”

  “Hey,” Stephanie said. “Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

  “Is he all right? It looks like his head is about to explode,” Remmy asked Finn in a whisper.

  “I’ve seen him like this once before, the night after Ramirez died,” Finn said, stepping in beside Agameg. “What’s going on, just start at the beginning, okay?”

  Agameg squeezed his eyes shut for a moment then slowly opened them, the green tint was slowly being replaced with red. “I saw there was an open slot for an Engineering Chief on Captain’s crew last night. You would be one Chief, and I would be the other Chief. Different shifts, different Chiefs. Split responsibility, very efficient.”

  “Okay, so you signed up for that,” Stephanie said.

  “Yes, I contacted Hausgiest, and he said that was all right, there was someone to replace me on Triton permanently because five people were almost finished training with me. He would finish training them. He made sure my name went to the top and this,” he tapped his command and control unit, “said I was the new Chief, the second Chief. I would have a security watch too, day after tomorrow. It told me to come here. Now it says Captain Ayan is the new Chief. Finn and I are now missing from all lists.” He held his command unit up to show Finn and Stephanie. “We are not assigned.” He took a breath, his large, oval eyes reddening. “We have no jobs.”

  “Okay, we’re going to get moving on this mission,” Stephanie said. “You’re coming with us if you can calm down, and I’ll sort this out.”

  “You’ll sort it out,” Agameg said anxiously.

  “Yes, I’m sure it’s a simple error,” she reassured. Finn could already see she was calling up Captain Valent’s ident on her command and control unit.

  “We’re ready to go,” Lieutenant Commander Erron said into the ship intercom at the rear of the cargo bay as the airlock closed. She held her hair tie between her teeth as she started bundling her hair into a ponytail.

  “Just confirming destination, because things got confusing for a bit there,” Lieutenant Garrison replied over the intercom. “We’re going to be docking with the Fallen Star?”

  “Exactement,” she replied.

  “That’s Old French for ‘exactly,’” Lewis said over the intercom. “In case you were wondering, Lieutenant.”

  “I know,” Lieutenant Garrison said with a sigh. “Thank you, Lewis. We’ll be taking off as soon as we get the all-clear from the Solar Forge. Should be about a minute.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Liara said.

  “The Blessed Mission is docking with the Solar Forge already?” Finn asked her, aware that Agameg was practically attached to his side. Issyrians didn’t do well without stability, and Agameg’s stability was his job. It was a central part of his identity.

  “I guess,” Liara replied. “I don’t know what’s going on, to be honest, only that my request for the communications position went through late last night, and I’m already assigned to this mission. The brief hasn’t been sent yet. Oh, and I’m getting a bunk and a welcome packet later today. All us new crew are getting crammed into a little aft berthing while the rest of the ship gets some work done. I think I signed up prematurely, but there were only three communications positions, and I qualified for just one.”

  Finn could see Agameg’s eyes turning green again, and he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, why his mood was turning so quickly. He could feel the butterflies gathering in his stomach, so he stepped forward and offered his hand before he lost his nerve. “I’m Billy,” he said. “Finn, everyone calls me Finn, it’s a thing with last names from the Samson, which you probably know as the Warlord. Whew, lots of names changed in the last year, I guess. Well, but not my name, they pretty much always called me Finn.”

  Remmy, grinning from ear to ear behind Liara mouthed the words; ‘Are you okay?’ then rolled his eyes and turned away.

  “I’m Liara,” she said with an amused smile. She tapped her wrist to bare her hand then tapped his to retract his suit from fingers to wrist. “We shake hands like this where I come from.” She grasped his hand, and he couldn’t help but notice how warm and soft hers was. “Shaking hands with gloves on is like lying, you’re only pretending to touch someone.”

  “I’m Remmy Sands,” he said, approaching from behind her with a big smile. His right hand was bare and extended. “Just call me Remmy. I’ll be the security for this trip,” he said to her as she tentatively shook his hand.

  “No, you’re our guide for this trip,” Stephanie said as she finished looking at her command and control unit. “Agameg and I are security, Finn is our tech, Liara is our communications and legal specialist. She’s also a trained therapist with a medical degree.”

  “Pardon me, Lieutenant Commander, but that last part isn’t quite right,” Liara said. “I’m a trained crisis worker, it was about three months of training and a year experience. As for that medical degre
e, I can read a detailed med scan, and do some emergency work, but I’m not a physician. Oh, and I can deliver a baby in an emergency if nothing goes wrong. I think the Triton’s Artificial Intelligence processed my records wrong.”

  “Your training still fills more gaps than most, and you have a knack for data retrieval,” Stephanie replied. “So seal up your suit and start reading the mission brief so we can all figure out what we’ll be doing aboard the Fallen Star this morning.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Liara said without a moment’s hesitation.

  “We’ll be meeting a medical technician when we get there. He was one of Messana’s team and wasn’t aboard during the incident. The Captain may have questions about him later, we’re screening medics more thoroughly these days.”

  The sound of the landing struts retracting told Finn that they were taking off. He opened the mission file on his command and control unit and tried to concentrate.

  “Did you find out what’s going on?” Agameg asked as he looked at the file on his comm unit.

  “Jake is in a meeting with the fleet commanders from this solar system, but he said it really was a mix up and he’ll have news when he has a minute,” Stephanie replied. “I think that’s the least of the news we can expect when this meeting is over.”

  Chapter 27

  Priorities

  Every muscle he knew he had, some he suspected must exist, and many he didn’t know he had were sore. Ayan’s first glance at him as she picked him up from his small quarters sent her into a fit of laughter. “Oh, the look on your face,” she said. “It’s as if you’re asking the universe what you did to deserve this.”

  “The auto-medic said this is normal for someone in my condition after the kind of activity I had yesterday. I told it that I was in great condition, then it agreed and told me not to take so many stims.”

  That only brought on feigned sympathy, a hug, and an extended, “aw, poor thing,” from Ayan. “Did you get any sleep?”